India Pale Ale

Yes! Finally, we did it! We have made some big batches of beer! Ever since we started stirring in the brewkettle, we have been planning on brewing a bit more than the usual two crates of beer. First, we needed some more experience on the brewing process ofcourse and as a loyal fan, you probably have been following our adventures since day 1. We experimented with some IPAs and barley wines, even made a Belgian tripel. But all we wanted was to make that little dream come true and create a huge amount (for our standards) of beer in one go.

A couple of weeks ago, it was the day. Big brewday! On a cold and early thursday morning, we moved our bottoms towards Bodegraven, where Menno and his crew were waiting for us. Our friends from De Molen have given us the opportunity to brew on their shiny equipment, which we are very grateful for. Who doesn’t want to brew together with one of the top-respected brewers? And as ambitious as we were, we didn’t want to brew just once. No, we filled them kettles twice!

Not a hard guess, but the recipes we came up with were an IPA and a Double Oatmeal Stout. Our recipes needed a little tweaking, as not all the ingredients we had in mind were available, but we didn’t have to make any large adjustments. A long day of weighing the ingredients, lifting the large amounts of malt, filling the hopback caringly named R2D2 and hugging the yeast, followed. But at the end of the day, two tanks of beer had been filled and with a glass of a new de Molen saison (a style made for the workers on the fields, fittingly), we could look back on a fantastic day.

Are you curious and want to taste them? At this moment, the beers are chilling out in the lager tanks for a short time. After that, they will be bottled and ready to hit the shelves in one or two months from now and we might even be found on a local event or festival. Be sure to keep an eye on our website and facebook!

On a particular thursday evening in september, the Rooie Dop crew gathered in Baarn, where they once placed their first steps into craft brewing. The crew was armed with several well-known (and less-known) IPAs to try and discover the secrets behind these bitter brews. It would become an epic and fearsome battle. Bottles were smashed, tastebuds were punched in the face and alcohol overwhelmed our brains. In the end, we dismantled the recipes, combined some of the best of hops available and recreated them into one single beverage: this IPA must be almost perfect!

#015 is centred around one word: “dry”. Just like #014 El Salvador, we split the batch to explore different “dry”hopping-combinations. We adjusted our mashing-procedures to obtain a bit more “dry” beer, so the bitterness of the hops can shine through. However, our Dutch summer wasn’t “dry” at all. No worries, better times will surely come!

Are you longing for that thirst-quenching bitter gold on a hot summer day? The sort made with both Amarillo and Simcoe hops, of which a lot of them are added late in the boil? Don’t look any further, here is your savior! El Salvador usually resides in sunny Spain, but now and then comes over to our small country. When he’s gone again, all that is left is total chaos and a bunch of inexplicable one-liners. Just like when you drink too much of El Salvador!

A lot of people are interested in our stuff and are asking for opportunities to taste them. This is ofcourse great, but we have to be a bit cautious on giving away all of our beer, or there won’t be anything left soon (not even for ourselves; hey we wanna have a sip of that kick-ass Rooie Dop as well! ). To be a bit more transparent about the things going on at the moment, lets spend a blog to it!

We are currently discussing the possibilities of organising one or more tasting sessions at our brew location at the wharf. We had a tryout last month on Jos’ stag party and we thought that went very well. Laidback people having a laugh, tasting a decent beer accompanied by artisanal cheese and sausage. We haven’t worked out the details on these plans, but we are aiming to have one this year at least. That sounds like it will take a long time, but it’s difficult to say when we can have the first one. We are running out of stock fast, so we have to rebuild it a bit (otherwise there won’t be anything to taste, is there? ).

Your enthusiasm on trying our beers makes us also think about brewing bigger batches of our recipes. That means we have to up the scales of our own brewkettle or maybe even think of contacting a commercial brewery (hopefully, we can once see Jos next to kegs filled with Rooie Dop!). We have some great ideas of what we want to taste our beers like, now it’s only a matter of finding a fitting recipe for them. We already got a lof of feedback on our beers, which is very much appreciated. That way we can continue to improve our brews!

Who knows what the future holds for us, but at the moment we need to keep on experimenting with ingredients and creating new beers with our current equipment. Our #014 will be another IPA, where we are going to try several different hopping techniques. The hops we’re going to use are good, there’s no doubt about that, and we want to see the best of them in our beer! We know you want that too!

De Rooie Dop loves bitter brews and therefore loves big hoppy IPAs. Our 10th brew is such a delicious IPA. An India Pale Ale made with three C hops: Cascade as bitter hop and Chinook and Columbus for the aroma and flavor. Also the C is for Cees, who made this recipe. We know, that sounds like a boring wedding-alphabet… But we assure you the beer ain’t boring by any standards!

The Vombatis Ursinus is our 8th brew. It’s a very limited brew and made especially for the local student pub “Wombat” in Zeist. The brewers have a special connection with that pub, because they used to volunteer there back in the days. To educate our friends into the world of craft beer, Jos made a recipe for an easy to drink India Pale Ale. As our main hop we chose Amarillo, which is able to steal the hearts of those new to the style, with its lovely tones of citrus and grapefruit. Spring 2011 has finally started with this brew!

A beer light in color, but strong in hops. Again based on a recipe from internet, this time by Jos. For the first time, we used the dryhopping method, with a whole bunch of Amarillo hops. And what a lovely aroma they give to the beer! Fresh citrus and grapefruit from the Amarillo overwhelm the aroma and the light body hardly meets up to the fine aroma.